


thinking about driving round in your car (I never thought that we would take it very far)

by lavenderandthyme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Getting Together, Not Canon Compliant, OT3 if you squint, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderandthyme/pseuds/lavenderandthyme
Summary: On the third night he caves and asks her-“Did you love him, Nat?”She tightens her hand on his wrist, steady, and replies –“I thought I did once, but now, now I’m not so sure”She doesn’t think he believes her, but he doesn’t try to argue, only grabs her wrist in return and pulls her just a little bit closer.orNatasha and Steve find Bucky; Natasha and Steve find eachother.





	thinking about driving round in your car (I never thought that we would take it very far)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the middle of the night, and haven't edited it properly but I love them, so here you go.
> 
> I wasn't really intended for Bucky to me as much a part in this as he is, but he's too cute to ignore. His and Nat's relationship is implied as something that happens in the past and is left there, this story is more centralised on her and Steve!
> 
> Enjoy!

It goes like this.

Natasha’s leaves DC. She’s gone for about a week, (9 days to be specific, but Steve will swear blind now it was week. Stubborn one, he is), when she comes back to her hotel room, black stilettos balancing on her fingertips, to find Steve sitting in the desk chair of her hotel room, flicking absentmindedly through the Cosmopolitan issue she’d picked up for the flight.

She starts a little when she sees him, breath catching in her throat ever so slightly - but so minutely that only someone who knows her well enough would be able to notice. Steve does. He narrows his eyes at her slightly, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smirk.

“Nat” he nods at her smugly from across the room, flinging the magazine on the bed to his right.

She rolls her eyes in return, letting out her breath and moving to drop her shoes next to the suitcase sitting in front of the desk, before looking up to him, her own eyes slightly narrowed.

“I didn’t take you for the tracking down kind, Rogers,” his smirk widens a little as she speaks, and she swears he leans forward just a little, his arms crossed in front of him. “- I have to say, I am impressed.”

She walks through to the connecting bathroom to avoid seeing his face become any more smug, and turns on the shower, turning the heat up as far as it will go. If he says anything, she doesn’t hear him through the wall.

“I hate to disappoint, but he isn’t here,” she has to shout over the running water, and moves back to lean against the doorway to the main room, crossing her arms as she watches him, smug grin and all. “-although, it’d be a damn sight easier for you if he was, huh?” 

He begins to reply, grin dropping slightly at the mention of Barnes - _Bucky_ , but he stops when his eyes finally drop to the sickening amount of blood covering her entire left side, staining the pretty pale pink of her dress a nasty, muddy sort of brown. He moves to stand immediately, but she stops him before he pulls the emergency med kit she know he has on him somewhere.

“Shit, Nat” 

“Watch the language Cap.” He looks unimpressed for a moment, but the concern overrides it not long after. She lets out a breathy laugh.  “At ease, soldier, it’s not mine.” 

This time, she turns up the corners of her mouth coyly as he rocks back into the chair, letting out a low whistle on his exhale.

It was in fact, various other people’s blood streaking her side, 3 Russian diplomats, again if specifics were important. Not that Natasha can recall anything particularly diplomatic from her position looking straight into the barrel of their guns, but then again, she hadn’t exactly been in the chatting mood either. It wasn’t the first group of KGB sympathisers she’d encountered since S.H.I.E.L.D fell, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.

She hadn’t searched up yet exactly what she shared to the entire world, she wasn’t sure she wanted to read what had been written about her, what exactly she was defending herself for, wasn’t sure she was quite ready yet.

“Give me fifteen,” she looks down at her side and lets out her own low whistle at the extent at the staining. “-scratch that, give me half an hour, and then we’re having words. This was far too close to a Nick Fury move for my liking, Rogers.” 

She walks back into the bathroom, now filled with a thick cloud of steam, throwing the unsalvageable dress into the bin. It was a shame, really, she’d liked that one. 

After, Natasha walks back into the room, a towel drying at the ends of her hair, to find he’s moved to the bed, a platter of room service sitting on the bed next to him as he flicks through the limited TV channels to find something good for background noise. She was certain the room wasn’t bugged, she’d turned it upside down too many times to miss anything by now, but old habits die hard, for the both of them. 

He settles on an old rerun of _Frasier_ before finally turning to look at her, snorting at her pyjamas – an old tatty pair of leggings and an equally faded Captain America shirt that was about 3 sizes too big for her.

“I can sign it for you, if you want?” 

She sticks her tongue out at him like a child, and discards the towel on the back of the chair, flopping down on the other side of the bed and picking at the plate of fries in front of her. 

“This better not be on my room bill.” 

He scoffs her at, stealing a fry, but she knows that he wouldn’t let her pay for it even if she’d ordered it. It would annoy if she didn’t already know they were even by now, she was spy after all, she could be inconspicuous in paying her own cheques. 

“So,” she turns on her side to face him, elbow tucked under her head, eyes sparkling excitedly. “- how did you find me? I wasn’t exactly sending postcards.”

Understatement, at least from her perspective, she’d gone for complete radio silence.

“I never lost you, Nat.”

Apparently not completely inconspicuous, then. He’s too focused on the burger in front of him that he doesn’t notice her expression dropping a little. She’d said those exact words to Banner once, when she’d first met him, what felt like decades ago now. 

“Besides,” he looks up at her now, passing her the pickle from his burger, which she takes with a grateful hum. “-you said you always wanted to visit Prague in the summertime.” 

“Huh, I guess I did.” 

She had said that, about six months ago now, an offhand comment she certainly wasn’t expecting him to listen to, never mind remember. She picks up the bowl of quickly melting chocolate ice cream in the middle of the plate. His food choices were proving far too coincidental to be spontaneous, damn bastard had remembered her travel plans and favourite foods.

“Well, that covers how,” she starts to speak through a mouthful of ice cream, but she stops and swallows when he fixes his _manners_ glare on her, she rolls her eyes again, pettily batting his spoon away from the bowl of ice cream in her hands. “- please enlighten me to _why_ the hell you’re here, not that I'm unhappy you are.” 

He sighs, and opens his mouth, like a very handsome fish, but doesn’t say a word.

 _Hang on,_ she thinks, _a very handsome fish? Where the hell did that come from?_  

She freezes around a mouthful of ice cream, which lets face it at this point is just very cold chocolate cream, before realising they’re both doing their very best impressions of fish and snaps her mouth shut, raising her eyebrows in expectation at him.

He sighs again. Really a great sigher, is Captain American, exceptional at sighing, no one better. He turns on to his back and looks at the ceiling for a moment before finally speaking.

“He’s - uh, he’s asking for you.”

His eyes flick to hers immediately when she drops the spoon, and she thinks her eyebrows must’ve flown into her hairline by the way he looks at her, cautious, like a deer in very bright headlights.

“Me?” She puts down the bowl, admittedly with more force than truly needed. “What the hell is he asking for me for?”

He bites at his lower lip for a second before sighing, _again_. He’s looking back up at the ceiling when he speaks.

“All I know, Nat, is that every time we corner him, just as we think  _maybe this time he’ll speak_ , he looks at me, looks right through me, and says ‘ _Bring me Natalia, bring me Natalia and then we can talk.’_ ”

His eyes snap back to hers, searching her face thoughtfully for a moment, then -

“That was your name, when you knew him,” his tone sounds sharper that she knows he means it to be, so she shuts her eyes and tries not to flinch. “- your name was Natalia, wasn’t it?” 

She doesn’t reply right away, just nods tersely, but draws in a little breath when she opens her eyes to find him watching her, waiting for her to explain. She thinks he deserves that much from her.

“There were always stories, growing up in the Red Room, of a man that slept on ice. The greatest agent there ever was. _Zimniy soldat,_ we called him, The Winter Soldier.” 

This time it was her turn to sigh softly, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, but instead watches where he’s absentmindedly caught her free hand, thumb running over her knuckles, skin still pink from her scalding shower. She opens her mouth, takes a breath, and continues.

“I always thought that’s all they were, just stories, but then I got sent into the field, and The Winter Soldier got sent with me. He was a brilliant agent, utterly ruthless - though that was probably due to the amount of tampering they’d done in his brain.” 

She flicks her eyes back up to his again, this time she was sure she was the deer and he the floodlights. His jaw was clenched tightly. 

“The James Barnes I knew was not your Bucky, Steve, that’s why I never said anything. I didn’t think it was important.”

“That wasn’t your call to make, Natasha.”

He drops her hand and she swears she could almost cry for a millisecond, she swallows it down.

“I know.” She mirrors his position, looking up to the ceiling. “He’s been off the ice too long, if he remembers me. The memory wipes must be breaking down.”

“I need you to come with me,” he takes a sharp inhale and the hand at her side twitches. She doesn’t move. “-I need him to come home.”

His voice sounds strained, and when she turns her head to look at him, he staring at her with that same ferocious look he’d had in Sam’s car, and in the warehouse in New Jersey, and when she gave him Barnes’ files in DC 9 days ago.

Natasha just nods, getting up silently to clean her teeth. She slides back into the bed and turns herself away from him, facing the window and shutting her eyes. There was reason none of them knew anything about her past, her upbringing, she’d made a vow to never speak of the Red Room to anyone. So much for that now. She pulls the sheets tighter around herself.

“Get some sleep, Steve, we’ll leave in the morning.”

He doesn’t sigh this time, blessedly, but she hears him move the plates and move around the room for ten minutes or so before sliding back into the bed behind her. She feels his abnormal heat levels creep over to her side, and she lets it relax her, just this once.

Natasha lies still for ten minutes before she caves, reaching out behind her and clasping her hand around his wrist, (or at least half of his wrist, her fingers were only normal length), like she’d done countless times before, searching for his pulse, steady, under her thumb. She feels the tension melt out of her, especially so when Steve’s fingers curl around her own wrist, pulse on pulse. 

She wakes before him the next morning, only by five minutes or so, and gets up and packs silently. She makes her way downstairs to pay for the room while he gathers his things, excluding the room service bill, which had been pre-paid the night before.

 

*

It goes like this.

 

They spend two weeks looking for him, and on the fourteenth day they find James Barnes in an abandoned apartment in Quebec.

 _(On the third night he caves and asks her-_

_“Did you love him, Nat?”_

_She tightens her hand on his wrist, steady, and replies –_

_“I thought I did once, but now, now I’m not so sure”_

_She doesn’t think he believes her, but he doesn’t try to argue, only grabs her wrist in return and pulls her just a little bit closer.)_

 

He still puts up a good chase, but it feels different this time, feels like it’s ceremonious more than anything, like they’re just putting on a show. Finally they corner him on a rooftop, and the soldier, her soldier, Steve’s oldest friend, he looks at them, and smiles coldly.

“My Natalia, how you’ve grown”

Natasha flinches and Steve moves to step in front of her slightly, unthinking, like he doesn’t realise, she puts a hand on his arm and nods at him. _Back down, I’m fine._ He does. She’s not sure exactly when they’d reached that level of telepathic communication, but she realises it’s been a while, it knocks her back a little.

Barnes is speaking Russian, but it's stilted, sounding more like a second language again. That was the way it worked, the longer he was off the ice, the more memories that came back. She wondered for the first time if there was enough space for them all in his head, and if not, which ones win? Which memories dominate? 

“ _Mne skazali, chto ty predate.”_

 _I was told you are a traitor._  

Steve looks at her, confused, but she stares at James, _Bucky_ , not moving. She realises she’s crying when he speaks again, she touches her hand to her cheek, surprised. She doesn’t know why, but doesn’t care to think about it.

“They told you a lot of things, many of them are not true.”

She wills her voice to stay level but he’s smirking at her, and it chills her blood to ice. She gets the impression that somewhere, a little deeper, she’s looking at Bucky Barnes right now. His smirk is the same as Steve’s, and it drops the same way when he notices her tears. You can almost see it, when he switches, just like that, something snaps in him.

“I don’t know what to think, Natalia, there are too many, I can’t -” he breaks off and looks at Steve, looks at where Steve’s forefinger and thumb have encircled Natasha’s wrist, pressing at her pulse, the same way she does to him in the middle of the night, the same she’d done to Barnes before the fall of the KGB, before S.H.I.E.L.D. was in the picture. His eyebrows furrow and flashes of recognition, confusion, anger fall across his face, in the end he just laughs. It was a broken kind of sound, grating, like china pots smashing on concrete, she flinches again, and wonders when she'd gotten so soft.

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice is soft behind her, and Natasha almost forgot he was there for a second, but now he’s all she can think about, his hand gripping her wrist just shy of too tight, heat hitting her back. “Buck, please, please just come home.” 

James faints before he can answer, but Natasha thinks she sees him nod before he goes. She lets out the breath she’d been holding, but remains stuck, standing where she is on the edge of the rooftop of the apartment block. She feels Steve move forward, towards Bucky, and his fingers drop, but not entirely, instead intertwining themselves with her own and pulling her forward, out of her daze. 

“-need to get him back to the hotel room.”

Her eyes remain stuck on their hands, his voice detached and far-away sounding. She can hear her own pulse in her ears, erratic and out of sync.

“Nat.”

_Steady._

She snaps her eyes to his, Steve is standing over Barnes’, his hand still outstretched and holding onto hers, tugging at it lightly.

“We need to get him out of here, okay?” 

Natasha nods and drops her hand from his, ignoring the way his face falls. She watches the white marks from where he gripped her fade, and then moves towards him and Barnes.

 

*

It goes like this.

 

Bucky sleeps for five days, waking sporadically in fits of spasms and violent outbursts that Steve and Natasha can only just stop every time. He usually shoots up, at any given time, speaking in fits of barely distinguishable Russian that Natasha can hardly grasp, sometimes trying to throw a punch at the thing closest to him, before falling back under as quickly as he came to. Each day he remembers more and punches less.

Steve spends the first three days pacing restlessly around the hotel room, Natasha doesn’t try to stop him, she knows it would be pointless.

She spends her time sitting next to Barnes, _Bucky,_ half out of caution, half out of genuine concern. Her hand finds his wrist every now and then, the one not made of metal. She doesn’t miss the way it calms his breathing, neither does Steve. 

On the fourth morning she wakes to find Steve sitting in the chair next to the bed, head in his hands and breath hitching. She watches him for a moment, unnoticed, and then sits up without a word and pushes her hands into his hair, scratching his scalp softly, running her fingers through the longer strands at the front. The bed was high enough that when he leans forwards his head falls into her lap, and his hands find the side of her legs. 

She don’t think she’ll ever forget what it was like to see America’s righteous man cry, doesn’t think she could ever recount it verbally either, it was far too private, on both sides. 

He sobs into her legs for what feels like forever, and she drops her head on top of his, curling her body around him like you would a grenade, and ignores her own tears falling into his hair, whispering meaningless things into his ear. He stills after a while and moves to stand up, but she grabs his hand, pulling him down, with not much force, to lie on the edge of the bed. 

He does with a small sigh, she could’ve slapped him for it, probably would’ve done not two weeks ago.

He lies facing towards Bucky, who remains unconscious, steady breaths towards the ceiling, and Natasha curls herself around Steve again in between the two of them, entangling their legs and clutching his t-shirt in tight fists. He drops a light, barely-there kiss to her forehead, and his arms find her waist, just below her elbows. She lets herself fall asleep.

When she wakes he’s gone from next to her and she can hear the shower running. James is watching her intently, curiously, but clearly. She sits up, and they talk.

 

*

It goes like this.

 

They bring Bucky home, or at least to Stark Tower, where he is promptly detained and questioned by a very suspicious Tony – much to Steve’s insistence it’s not needed. Tony releases him soon enough however, pleased with his progress from deadly assassin, to a confused but practically harmless guy. He takes one look at his metal arm and practically skips to his workshop, babbling about brushing up on prosthetics designing.

Natasha raises her eyebrows as he leaves. Feeling like that was far too easy on Tony’s regular standards, and looking at Steve’s surprised expression, he seems to share her opinion. 

He takes a step towards her, running a hand down her arm almost unconsciously, she only leans into him a little.

“Must’ve caught him on a good day, I guess” 

She hums in reply, but narrows her eyes in Tony’s direction, eyes flitting nervously to Bucky, who was sitting flexing the fingers of his metal arm in front of him. She sighs gently, hopefully the worst was over. It seems she too, has become an excellent sigher. 

“Tony doesn’t have good days.” 

She leans into Steve a little more, almost unnoticeably, his hand moves to her lower back.

“Well, let’s not question it, Nat.” 

It seems they must’ve caught Tony on a good week, because he gives Bucky his own rooms on the residential floor, between Steve’s and Nat’s – granted it has extra security and failsafe’s than the rest, Nat knew it had been too easy, but James, _Bucky_ , says it makes him feel better knowing they can stop him if he goes AWOL again. 

Steve wants to fight it, but Natasha squeezes his arm, he sighs, and backs down.

 

*

It goes like this.

 

Natasha lies awake in her own apartment for 3 nights, (2 and a half, because specifics are important), before she caves.

Steve’s rooms just down the corridor are easy enough to break into, too easy really - even for her, so much so she has the feeling he wasn’t exactly trying to keep her out. He’d been staying here while Bucky climatized, so he says, but she knows him too well to ignore his, understandable, lack of enthusiasm to go back to his apartment in Brooklyn. The selfish part of her also clings to the idea that he doesn’t want too much distance between them, either. 

He’s sleeping when she walks in to his room, but lightly enough that he wakes with the pressure shift of her opening and shutting his bedroom door softly. 

“Nat?” his voice is still thick with sleep, and deeper than usual, she swallows. “Are you okay, did something happen?” 

He moves to sit up and move towards her and she has to smile, Steve and his constant worry and expectation of something always being wrong. The soldier’s curse.

“At ease, soldier,” she moves to kneel on the bed next to him, keeping some distance by sitting herself down on the backs of her legs. “- I just couldn’t sleep, s’all”

He looks at her for a moment, blinking, either waiting for her to continue or still trying to figure out if he was exactly awake yet. Probably a little of both, Nat always seemed to be sporadic in when she chooses to expand and when she chooses not to. This time she chooses not to.

“Oh,” he shifts over immediately, pulling the duvet up from under her. “- come on then, you’ll let the heat out.”

That was what it’d always been like with Steve, no questions asked. She nods at him softly and slips herself under, curling herself against his side like a cat, and his arm comes to rest on her hip, possessively almost. She moves closer. His hand picks at her t-shirt, rubbing the faded material of a, different this time, Captain America t-shirt between his thumb and forefinger with a quiet snort.

“Didn’t realise you were such a fan, Romanov.”

She buries her face in his own t-shirt, inhaling a little, letting the scent of washing powder and cinnamon invade her. Steve drops the shirt and lets her take hold of his wrist, feeling his pulse, always steady and strong against her fingertips.

“What can I say,” she lets out a contented sigh, and he drops a kiss to her hairline, light as air, his arms tightening carefully, “ -it’s comfortable.”

She hears him let out a soft chuckle, but before she can reply, she finally slips into the sleep that’s avoided her since she started to try without him there. She realised she’d grown dependant on him at some point, like a small child with a stuffed animal, it scares her just a little. He doesn’t tease her, thankfully, and she’s happy just ignoring the implications behind it for as long as she can get away with.

His side of the bed is cool when she wakes, but he’s left a note where his head had been. Trust the old man to write a note instead of just sending her a text, or just waking her up like a normal person would.

She smiles and slips out his rooms, stealing a granola bar as she goes.

She doesn’t thank him verbally, but is grateful when he continues to not say anything the nights that follow when she slips into his rooms, silent, only lifting up his sheets and drawing her in close, hands clasped on wrists. She continues to ignore the wash of calm that sleeping next to him brings, and he, in turn, lets her.

She’s not sure which annoys her most.

 

*

It goes like this.

 

They’re in Paris, following up on an ex-HYDRA thug that had been rifling around in things he certainly shouldn’t have been, when Steve kisses her, (well, specifically who kisses who is up for debate, but for all intents and purposes it was him that kisses her), and actually kisses _her_ , not a cover.

They’re standing on a metro station, both of them looking extremely dishevelled, but thankfully not overly bloody. At least nothing Steve’s jacket can’t cover as it hangs over her shoulders. 

She leans on his forearm casually as she adjusts her shoes, the damned things were pinching her feet in places that had never been pinched, and she wished these men didn’t always have such a weakness for women in six-inch heels.

She smirks to herself a little, this particular target didn’t seem to have much of an affinity for her heels when they were compressing his throat. She decides the shoes can stay, her feet will recover.

She centres her balance again, not half as surprised as she definitely should’ve been when he stops her hand from pulling away and takes it in his own, intertwining their fingers and giving her palm a gentle squeeze as he pulls her into him.

She goes willingly, half to keep up a sense of cover, half because, even with the jacket, she’s still feeling a little cold, not that the back of her dress still being damp with a mixture of her own and a few other peoples blood helps at all.

“Bucky said that was the last of the big ones”

Steve speaks into her hair and she hums into his chest, lifting her head up to look at him.

“There’s always more,” she smiles at him gently, fondly. “- it doesn’t matter who wins or who loses, trouble always comes knocking.”

“Who’s the one impersonating Nick Fury now, huh?”

She searches his eyes thoughtfully for a moment before dropping her gaze to his lips for barely a second. The hand not holding hers comes up to cup the side of her jaw and he leans down towards her a little. Her breath catches slightly. 

“Tell me to stop.”

His voice comes at barely a whisper, and she can’t help but smile and the sincerity in his eyes. Blue and clear, steady as the pulse beating against her wrist. Even in her heels she barely reaches the top of his shoulder, so she ends up pushing herself on her toes a little, and even then he leans down a bit more to slant his lips over hers.

Natasha gasps and he takes advantage of it, slipping his tongue into her mouth and slipping his hand round to the back of neck, her own free hand fists a handful of his dress shirt, thankfully not covered in any blood, but streaked with dirt and crumpled quite a fair amount. She’s not picky, though.

She pulls away when her lungs start to burn, and she swears he chases her a little, leaning a little further forward, settling his forehead against her own – his hand still curled round her neck.

“Damn, Rogers,” her voice is a little breathless, and she bites her lip to contain her smirk. “- you really have been practising.”

The corners of her mouth turn up a little anyway, but he just rolls his eyes at her and drops his hand to the middle of her back, pulling her into his chest and dropping his head into the hair covering her neck. She rests her head against his heart and lets out a breath, his pulse is steady, always steady, but she’ll be damned if it isn’t just that little bit faster, just that little bit louder against her ear. 

Her own pulse skips a beat when she feels her other hand, still encased in his own at her side, being squeezed by Steve’s much larger hand three times. She squeezes back, three times, and feels him smile into her neck. She smiles back, content.

 

*

 

 

_(It’s wasn’t until the seventh night, their last night, in Quebec when Bucky caves and asks her._

_He is sitting on a stool in the bathroom, and she has a pair of scissors in her hand, every few seconds her eyes flit to Steve’s sleeping form on the bed._

_“Do you love him, Natalia?”_

_She freezes around the lock of his hair between her fingers and forgets it’s him speaking for just a moment, her eyes betray her to look at the bed to check it’s Steve there._

_“I said once, that love is for children, now – now I’m not so sure.”_

_He looks up at her then, with eyes that see right through her, they always did, and he smiles.)_

 

 


End file.
